


Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

by harrietelizabeth



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Christmas Party, M/M, Ugly Holiday Sweaters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 08:12:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2844155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrietelizabeth/pseuds/harrietelizabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam is Alone This Christmas, until Harry invites him to his Orphans Christmas Party</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

It’s the story of his life, Liam thinks. 

A week before he’s meant to go to his girlfriend’s family’s house for Christmas, to meet them for the first time – as if that wasn’t awful and terrifying enough in itself – and she breaks up with him. 

Liam still hasn’t processed it properly, has mostly spent the past few days in some sort of transitive state between his bed and the local pizza shop in trackie bottoms. He’s not sure he wants to process it, if he’s perfectly honest.

It’s easier if he lives in denial, keeps her Christmas present in his underwear drawer where she won’t find it. Keeps the memory of her folded up in his back pocket so he can take it out and look at it whenever he feels like he’s forgetting.

It doesn’t feel like that’s going to happen anytime soon though.

 

Liam’s never been alone for Christmas before, because he’s always had his mum and dad, his sisters, he’s had the certainty of family and a tree and Christmas cake that you only eat the icing off, and all those things that make Christmas CHRISTMAS. But this year he has a family holidaying in Australia on a trip he couldn’t get the time off work to join them on, empty takeout containers and Drake on repeat in his flat, and the occasional visit from Harry to remind him his life isn’t an excruciatingly long episode of Jeremy Kyle just yet.

It’s on one of these visits, when snow looks more imminent than ever before, that Harry shows up – despite the weather – in a shirt unbuttoned nearly down to his navel, a flimsy scarf and his coat flapping open. Ignoring Liam’s (albeit pathetic) protests that he’s fine (the most overused and meaningless word in his vocabulary at the moment), Harry announces that Liam shall not be “alone this Christmas” (he sings the last part, for effect, because that’s who Harry is). 

“Come on mate, a few friends, beers, shitty movies, it’ll be great!”

Liam knows he has to say yes, for the simple fact that Harry is doing this especially for Liam and his other friends who have no one else on Christmas, because Harry could never say no to anyone (especially at the most WONDERFUL time of the year), and that makes it hard to say no to him. 

Louis had once pranked Harry by asking him for 500 quid because of a “weed deal gone wry”, and Liam had ended up agreeing to loan Harry the money to loan to Louis. That was how persuasive he was. Liam had made about eighteen mental notes to ask Harry how he managed it, but had somehow never got around to it.

He was probably too busy being convinced by Harry to do things he would never dream of doing ordinarily.

 

So it is that Liam finds himself on Harry’s doorstep on Christmas Eve (the original plan for Christmas Day had been extended, due in part to Harry’s infectious, unfathomable enthusiasm for the magic of the season, and in part due to it being Louis’ birthday. If there was one person it was harder to say not to than Harry, that person was Louis. Liam sometimes wondered how he managed to make friends with both of them in one lifetime). 

Liam clumsily rings the doorbell, his fingers thick and useless in woolen gloves his mum got him last year. He’s got one hand wrapped around a Christmas pudding from the freezer aisle of Tesco’s because Harry had stipulated that everyone contribute something to the meal, and Liam’s cooking abilities extend to instant noodles and protein shakes. 

He stamps his feet while he waits, cheeks pinking from the cold and huffing from the walk up to Harry’s apartment. 

When the door opens, Liam is less than 0.2 seconds away from dropping his carefully store-bought pudding all over the worn carpet in Harry’s apartment corridor. 

He’s face to face with a warm pair of brown eyes, flecked with green and gold and eight hundred other colours Liam is sure have not yet been discovered by science, because Liam has certainly never seen this end of the colour spectrum before. He feels himself warm from the core outwards, like he’s drinking whiskey by the gallon and it’s sort of torching his internal organs one by one. 

When he regains muscle control, he moves his eyes away from the warm brown ones crinkling in front of him, to the dark stubble scattered across the impossible sharp cheekbones – sharp enough to carve the Christmas ham, he thinks wildly – of this stranger, to the pair of dark lips curving upwards in a smile, a smile that reaches his eyes in the time it takes Liam to realize this is the most beautiful human being ever to live.

This person was created specifically to make everyone else look terrible, every day, until the end of time.

“You must be Liam,” the creature of perfection says, and Liam thinks “yes, I must be”, but he’s not sure if he remembers who Liam is just yet.

He’s sure it’ll come back to him.

Clearly unfazed by Liam’s lack of reply, Beautiful Stranger holds out a hand, saying “Zayn” in a voice that reminds Liam of log fires and cinnamon sticks.

Liam manages to take Ethereal Being’s hand (Zayn, Zayn’s hand, he reminds himself) without dropping his precious pudding, and then follows Zayn, aka Angel of Warmth and Light Sent Specifically to Ruin Liam’s Life, inside Harry’s flat.

The first thing he notices (apart from the fact that Zayn is wearing remarkably tight-fitting pants, hmm), is the abundance of lights.

First off, that’s a fire hazard, his health-and-safety-officer side says (the perils of a part time job to put himself through business school), and second, there’s far too much light in here to be able to hide the blush spreading across his cheeks when he realizes he’s going to have to spend the entire evening making polite conversation with people he’s never met while wearing a bright red Christmas jumper.

That was another of Harry’s stipulations – that everyone wear Appropriate Christmas Attire.

Liam had been part of a day-long email chain between himself, Harry and Louis (had Zayn been part of it too?) about what constituted Appropriate Christmas Attire. Christmas themed jumpers, hats and onesies were acceptable; merely adding a green or red scarf to your ordinary outfit was not. 

It seems some people didn’t get the memo, though. There was a tall bloke in the corner having a heated discussion with Louis over his lack of Appropriate Attire – he’d opted for a black shirt, jeans, and red suspenders, while Louis was resplendent in a matching green and red number complete with elf ears and pointy hat.

Liam almost has time to be impressed at how Louis is managing to talk down to a guy who’s at least a foot taller than him before he’s accosted by Harry, looking particularly Christmas-y in a green jumper covered in baubles. 

“Leeeeeeeeeyum!” Harry cooes, and Liam detects distinct signs of egg nog ingestion: his slurred, purry voice (although it’s fairly close to his normal voice) and his swaying steps as he steers Liam, albeit not exactly directly, to the kitchen. 

Liam tries not to mourn the fact that he’s lost sight of Mysterious Male Model Named Zayn, and adds his pathetic dessert to the collection of trifles, cold cuts and potato salad piled up in the kitchen.

“Liam, you have to meet someone, c’mon,” Harry is whinging, tugging on the sleeve of Liam’s highly embarrassing jumper, which is starting to itch around his neck. He tugs at it with one hand, being pulled into the main room by Harry with the other.

“Niall!” Harry waves frantically to a blonde boy across the room who appears to be responsible for Harry’s egg-nogged state, as he’s pouring out glasses for a gaggle of people who look like they’re in Harry’s photography course at uni. Reclaimed vintage jumpers and ironically festive hats and all.

Zayn, however, is in a black jumper flecked with little white snowflakes, the cartoon kind, which is VERY Zayn (he’s vaguely aware that it’s not exactly normal to be deeming things ‘very Zayn’ when he’s known Zayn approximately eleven and a half minutes, but this is not important to him at the current moment).

Niall has gone all-out ugly Christmas sweater, but it somehow looks charming against his glowing, rosy complexion and beatific smile. Liam’s eyes are drawn back to the gaggle of arty kids clustered around Niall and Niall’s egg nog, and he resists the urge to be judgmental. These are Harry’s friends, after all. 

On seeing Harry, Niall deserts his intoxication station and makes a beeline for him and Liam through the sparse crowd. On closer inspection, Liam can see his hair is dyed, and there’s brunette creeping up the back of his head. His cheeks are rosy and his eyes glassy, the perfect picture of Christmas merriment. 

Liam needs to get on that level. He also needs to talk to Zayn. In that order.

“Niall, mate, this is Liam, the one I’ve been telling you about!” Liam cringes. He sincerely hopes Harry isn’t trying to set Liam up with Niall; he’s got his eyes elsewhere currently. 

“Liam mate! Nice t’ meet ya,” Niall is saying in a warm Irish accent that makes Liam think of Guiness and crunchy gravel, and shaking his hand vigorously and pressing a glass of egg nog into his other hand. Liam can’t help but like him.

“Niall’s on Louis’ football team,” Harry explains, beaming at the Irish boy, and Liam starts to rethink his initial impression that Harry was trying to set them up. He feels Harry may have dibs here. 

The two of them sink into comfortable conversation and Liam starts to feel distinctly like a third wheel. He drifts over to Louis and Nick, but when he gets close enough to hear their hushed voices (“Could’ve at least got a hat or something”, “But then you wouldn’t be able to see my incredibly charming hair, which you love”, “Shut up”), he backs off.

The thing is, Liam doesn’t really like being around people he doesn’t know. Especially people like this, who are so cliquey and sure of themselves around each other, have known each other for years. Liam only knows Harry and Louis, who are both the kind of people who could walk into a room of complete strangers and walk out with ten new best friends. Harry could probably talk to a wall and find something in common with it. The wall would probably blush and ask Harry for his number. The wall is probably Niall Horan, come to think of it.

Liam would probably get over his fear of talking to strangers so he could talk to Zayn. He doesn’t seem like the others somehow. Despite the fact that he’s got the same kind of untouchable, enigmatic aura as them, it’s not because he’s trying. Liam thinks he could talk to Zayn about the inflated price of milk or the benefits of tax increases, and Zayn wouldn’t think Liam was boring, but whenever Liam gets up the nerve to approach him, Zayn’s always talking to some cookie-cutter cool kid from art school about obscure films or their favourite places to buy second-hand vinyls, and Liam thinks he’s maybe not so interesting after all.

He’s saved from having to insert himself awkwardly into either Harry or Louis’ conversation by the call that dinner is served. Louis is in charge of the seating arrangement (because Harry can’t say no to him, especially on his birthday). Liam is between Niall and a girl called Taylor, who Liam would maybe be quite happy chatting too (he thinks she’s a friend of Harry’s from way back, not one of the art school cronies), if Zayn Himself wasn’t sitting directly opposite him. Lois has strategically sat Nick at the opposite end of the table to him, but while Louis is distracted finding a glass to tap so he can announce a speech, Nick swaps with one of Harry’s fellow photography students so he’s right at Louis’ elbow, staring up at him smugly while Louis goes decidedly redder, stumbling through his birthday speech.

They pull the terrible Christmas crackers Harry bought from the dime store (Zayn holds his out to Liam, who is definitely far too warm for his ridiculous jumper), and they wear their paper hats and barter over the plastic gifts inside. Liam swaps Niall’s tiny red car for his set of tweezers (which Niall gives to Harry), and Liam ends up giving the car to Zayn because his cracker was a dud. Liam almost dies laughing at Zayn mimicking Harry reading out the terrible cracker jokes (“What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot”). 

They all eventually disperse from the table, most in search of more drinks. Louis almost pops a vein trying to avoid the mistletoe Harry’s put up everywhere, while Harry has no need for it because he kisses Niall everywhere – in the kitchen, against the front door, in the bathroom where Liam’s trying to take a piss.

When Zayn and Liam brave the cold for a cigarette they see Nick and Louis with their hands all over each other on the balcony. Zayn whispers “It’s a Christmas miracle”, and Liam can hardly breath for laughing.

He’s not sure if his deliriously happy brain has kicked into overdrive or not, but Liam’s sure he remembers Zayn pushing him into the bathroom, hand bunching in his awful sweater, which ends up on the floor. He’s sure he doesn’t imagine Zayn sucking him off messily and so, so willingly Liam almost loses his mind against the sink.

But when he wakes up in the morning with Zayn’s hair tickling his nose, sticky underwear and tinsel in his hair, he knows it wasn’t an egg nog induced vision.

“Merry Christmas,” Liam thinks to himself, smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed, comments and feedback are always appreciated (: if you ever want to scream about ziam or anything One Direction related with me, find me on at heauxrystyles.tumblr.com. My ask is always open!


End file.
